my book, they all had some common ideals which was complete nonviolence, which was always honoring the very poor in giving them hope, which was also nonenforcement. you'll be surprised you go to the biggest in south asia and it's made in india. you'll be amazed at times there are more hindus than muslims. i don't want more investment, but i think the tradition and their great mistakes provide a bridge to different sectors to come together. and not only tolerate each other, we often say if you tolerate others, that's the success of any society. i think all the teachings that i had an option to read i think is respect about human being as a human being. that's why in terms of ideals, i support that talk. but you're right. if anyone will try to choreograph it through political support, negative reaction will come. totally unprecedented in the history of south asia. never ever before there was an attack on a shrine. one because of the bigted people. and always different sects that those people know well that the challenge of their conservatism is embedded in the talk. that's why they attack the shrines because they are fearful that what if that talk will get support. so we have to be very careful and thank you for raising that point. >> thank you very much. i have to bring this session to a close. i'd like to apologize to all those who didn't get a chance to ask their question. i'd like to also invite all of you who are interested in pakistan affair and more broadly to attend the session this coming monday with ambassador with a special adviser of the prime minister. it will be this coming monday. thank you very much for your questions this morning. please come with me -- [ applause ] coming up on c-span 3, a book tv interview with bruce herschensohn about his political career. then a look at his founding founders gay and took advice in their personal and public lives. that's followed by the life of alexander hamilton and his idea of honor in politics. here's a look at some of our live programs coming up today on c-span. at 10:00 a.m. eastern, the national press club will hear from a presentative of the u.s. world war i centennial commission. he'll talk about efforts to have a park in washington, d.c. redeveloped as a national world war i memorial. at noon they hold a discussion on the affordable care act and the lawsuits that have been filed as a result of of the law's implementation. and later a look at the unaccompanied immigrant minors for up to two years before being deported. that's live at 2:00 p.m. eastern. with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span 2, here on c-span 3 we show you the most relevant congressional hearings and public affairs events and then on weekends c-span 3 is the home to "american history tv" with programs that tell our nation's story including six series. the civil war's anniversary visiting battlefields and key events touring museums and sites to discover what they reveal about the past. the best known history writers, the presidency looking at the policies and legacies of our nation's commanders in chief. lectures in history with top college professors delving into america's past and our new series, real america featuring archival government and films from the 1930s through the '70s. c-span 3, created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. next book tv talks with political commentator bruce herschensohn about his political career. professor herschensohn also provided his take on president obama's performance over the past five years. he sat down with us at pepperdine university in malibu, california. this is part of book tv's college series. it's about 45 minutes. joining us now on book tv is bruce herschensohn, professor here at pepperdine university. professor herschensohn, how long have you taught here and what do you teach? >> i teach u.s. foreign policy and started teaching here in the beginning of 1998, really when the school of public policy opened up for students. before that i had an affiliation with pepperdine since the mid-early 1970s. >> what kind of affiliation? >> i think you know i used to work for president nixon. when you get a request to go to a college, i always got the straw that meant i'm going to go in his place. of course, the college was never really delighted to see me, but too bad. so most of the colleges in those days, it was rough going. i felt i succeeded if i was still alive. this was vietnam and all of that. and so i remember sitting in a rental car with my hands on the steering wheel thinking, i made it. i got to the end of the speech and everything. so it was pretty rough going. when i went to pepperdine, it was terrific. i mean a lot of people disagreed with me naturally. it was mixed liberals and conservatives. but everyone was very respectful. and i really enjoyed it. and when i got back, i told president nixon, this is a great place, peper sign. so since that time in the early 1970s, i had an affiliation in one way or another. >> what's your history in california politics? >> um, not a great deal. i came out here when i was 8 years old, my folks came out here obviously. >> from? >> milwaukee, wisconsin, where i wasn't successful at all in any of the things that i endeavored when i was 8. so they came out here for me. and it went -- it was marvellous, a great place to go to school. in terms of politics, i got very involved in international politics starting in 1960. very involved in defense including intercontinental missiles in the late 1950s. so from that time forward, and once you start traveling around and doing these things in different countries, you get just engrossed in it. and at that time, i was making movies and those were the kind of movies i wanted to make, really documentaries. then started making movies for the united states information agency and president johnson asked me. it's his administration, asked me to come and work for the information agency as its director when george stevens jr. left. >> then you worked for president johnson, president nixon. >> indeed. >> any other presidents? >> nixon at the first and then at the white house. i just got to tell you, one of the -- not one of the, the greatest foreign policy experts i have ever known. i was very fortunate to work for that guy. magnificent man. the world thinks -- i shouldn't say what the world thinks, but he's received so much negative things thrown at him through the years and even lately that i just cringe every time i hear it. what do they know, what do they know? that most of them are so young that they had to get it from another generation and that generation got it from abc, cbs, nbc, "washington post," "new york times," from all of those elements that just hated him. so naturally this generation they just believe it because they heard a lot of good people reque speak negatively about him. and that bothers me a lot. >> bruce herschensohn, you got involved in electoral politics. did you win? >> no, i lost, of course. after the nixon administration came to television and did commentators and debates with former senator john tunny, great guy incidentally, we still see each other when he comes in from new york or i go there, marvellous guy. we used to do 14 years of these thin things. so once you have name. recognition, you're better off than someone who doesn't. i gave it a try and i ran -- i got the nomination, but i ran against barbara boxer in 1992. >> you ran again in '94, didn't you? >> no, i did not. the fest time i ran and i knew nothing was going to happen, but it was 1986. then the second time was 1992 and that did go a lot better, but i didn't win. >> bruce herschensohn, you're the author of this book "obama's globe." what do you mean by that? >> i believe, i don't know the man, i believe to him foreign policy is a nuisance. i think he loves the stuff that's domestic in nature. and when it comes to a foreign policy where a president can really do what he wants, he can't really do economic policy, he has to have a congress that's for him. if he doesn't, he can't do his stuff. but a foreign policy, you can do what you want as a president and i find that either he didn't know that when he came in, which isn't saying anything terrifically negative, most people don't even know this. every president in my lifetime that wanted to do things, other than nixon, he wanted to do foreign policy, and by god, he did. he did it magnificently. but most people -- and president reagan loved foreign policy as well. so those two really loved. . some others get stuck with it and realize it towards the end of their administration. a guy like bill clinton, he came into office wanting to have health care. that was his big pursuit and his wife headed it. we called it hillary care in those days. it didn't go anywhere. when he wanted to go into bosnia, he went into bosnia. i don't think there was one member of the congress that knew he was going to do it. when he wanted to send the navy to haiti, he did it. one thing everyone forgets, four days of bombardments of iraq to get rid of their wmd supplies, and he did that. all of those things he could do and did. and he can do it, he has the final say on things like that. then you take george bush 43. he wanted immigration reform, social security reform, but 9/11 happened. and man, if you wanted to to go into afghanistan, he went into afghanistan. good for him. if he wanted to go into iraq, good for him, he did it. president obama doesn't have -- i'm not so sure he really quite gets it. the only thing that i think that sort of gave me the idea, i guess he does get it, is when he was thinking of attacking syria very recently, that was before he decided to leave it up to the congress. he was going to leave it up to the congress. and then the next day i think vladimir putin really saved his neck because what he said was suggest this idea about having negotiations regarding the chemical weapons. any way, but he wanted the congress to have the final say. he almost, i could sense, wanted to tip this. he wanted to move the advocacy of only having foreign policy, he wanted to move it to domestic policy and have the congress take care of foreign policy. i think, i don't know the man, but it certainly appears that way. really appears that way. what we have not done for our allies, what we have done for those who are either enemies or those people who don't think well of us is extraordinary and consistent. when i say sal al lies i'm talking about great britain, the czech republic, poland, israel, honduras. when something happens like a break, people in iran demonstrating against their own government in 2009, nothing. you don't hear anything. didn't help. syri syrians, and i remember when i wrote this book, it it's in the boong that to just say it was people who had been killed in syria at that time. it's a u.n. estimate. they were attacking homes and it was 5,400. but people were carrying banners saying, help us or we'll all be killed. well, we didn't help them and they have been killed. now the estimate isn't 5,400, it's 130,000 is the last estimate of the u.n. and they are not estimating anymore because they say you can't do it anymore. you can't get a correct number. the people there will say we think it's about 150,000, but they were being killed. and then in iran when there was this marvellous demonstration of the people against the aye toe la, when plaque pla kwards said you're either for us or for them. a girl was killed on the street and blood coming out of her mouth and we had an opportunity to do something for some awfully good people in iran, awfully good people in syria and we didn't. >> would you have sent troops? >> i would never say we shouldn't send troops. i think he's already made that mistake regarding ukraine. no boots -- he'll say everything is on the table. two sentences later, no boots on the ground. most people say, yeah, that's right. it isn't right to say it. if you're the commander-in-chief, be quiet about anything you're not thinking of doing or even of what you're thinking of doing. he's done something really extraordinary. first, keep in mind, when you join the service basic training first week you're told by a commanding officer, first r sergeant, if you're ever captured, there are only three things you can tell the enemy. your name, your rank and your serial number, nothing else. we don't have a private, we have a commander-in-chief who tells iraq when we're going to leave. then tells afghanistan when we're going to leave. it's already telling ukraine that we're not even going to be there. it's just extra oordinary. i don't know how a guy who enters the service today can hear a commanding officer say that and not burst out laughing. naturally here, you get to know a lot of people who serve in the military. iraq, afghanistan, had lunch with a good friend and a great guy just back from afghanistan. i said, do you remember in basic training did you hear that? he said, yeah. there was some laughter between us because i just don't know how anyone can take that seriously it if your commander-in-chief is telling your real enemy in afghanistan and iraq. those aren't just antagonists or people who you can suspect may become enemies. telling them what we're going to do and it comes from someone so official as the president of the united states. >> bruce, when you look at the vietnam war and the most recent iraq war, what effect do those two wars have on how we view foreign policy and how we conduct foreign policy? >> you hit on something that is so important. what has had an effect is what people think happened in vietnam and didn't. they have been told a bunch of stories about vietnam. when i u said how people think about president nixon because they don't know anything about him, they think of vietnam, i hear intelligent, smart people, brilliant people say iing the vietnamese didn't know how to fight. you can't win a gorilla war. all untrue. we won the war with vietnam against north vietnam and also in cambodia. we won those wars on january 22rd of 1972, president nixon gave a speech in prime time saying the peace corps have been initialled and. will be signed. and we got everything we wanted. this isn't just me talking. the north vietnamese have said in their memoir, we lost the war then because the peace corps said that if there's any violations, i'm paraphrasing, but if there's any violations we will supply south vietnam with everything they lose. peace for peace. if they lose a bullet, we'll give them a bullet. if they lose a helicopter, we'll give them a helicopter. and it went into a whole list of things. but what we promised south vietnam was freedom. we used the bill of rights as the instrument and then expanded. it was everything you could think of. freedom of association, freedom of meetings, freedom of anything. and it was signed by the north vietnamese, south vietnamese, signed by the united states, we won. then what all came about incidentally, president nixon decided to bomb until they came back to the peace table. the media still calls it the christmas bombing. only one slight inaccuracy. we didn't bomb on christmas. we bombed in december and the president asked some on his staff, do you think we should bomb on christmas? i was one of those guys that says, yes, they are not cri christians in north vietnam. they are atheists. and besides they always like to bomb on holidays. 1968, the biggest holiday that you could have in that part of the world. and they attacked. i said by all mean, otherwise they are going to take advantage of us. they are not going to stop because we do. well, the president didn't agree with me. the president felt he shouldn't bomb on christmas. so we had a 36-hour bombing halt from christmas eve passing through december the 25th. but the media had already called it the christmas bombing and they just couldn't stop. they just loved to do that. so pick up any book right now and you'll see the christmas bombing that never occurred. however, the bombing that we did do in december was massive on military targets and industrial targets. they came to the table, they signed the agreement, we wanted them to sign, that was it. the war was done. and we won. and a lot of people were very unhappy that we won, including a lot of people in the congress who went out to every anti-vietnam demonstration and made speeches about how they were anti-vietnam. any way it took two and a quarter years, but this is what happened. watergate happened that year. and it hadn't become a scandal. it became a scandal really during 1973s was the big year for watergate. they knew then, and i'm quoting them, i'm not quoting me, that they would be able to win even though they had already lost. what they did was tested a new president, president ford, magnificent, marvellous guy, but i believe weak when faced with doing something regarding vietnam. they attacked one village in south vooietnam. he didn't do anything. they attacked another one. he didn't do anything. another village, they took a big province, they knew they had this thing won. they would attack saigon. president ford made a speech in '75 and he was just pleading for the congress to please give them the aid that we promised. and a lot of them walked out, made speeches for the audience. that was april the 10th. april 17th, cambodia fell. april 30th, south vietnam fell. all of that within april of '75. he pleaded. when south vietnam fell, senator fullbright said, and i'm being precise, i am no more concerned than i would be if arkansas lost a football game to texas. when arkansas loses a football game to texas, there isn't 2 million who die in a genocide in cambodia and another million who stormed out of south vietnam. there's still a half million in the south china sea that are still there from trying to escape. and i always feel this way. people who said peace now, they got it all right. but they didn't say anything about it. there's some marvellous people who did, who did. joan bias was at every anti-vietnam demonstration of any merit, particularly in washington, d.c., took an ad out in all the newspapers saying they have made a concentration camp out of south vietnam now that the north vietnamese have taken it it over. she couldn't get a lot of hollywood celebrities she wanted to sign that. someone who was give. ing the rest of his life to this because he feels so terrible about what he did during the war in effect supporting the north vietnamese was john voight, the guy is terrific. he did do anything to try to make up for it. there are those people. unfortunately, there are a lot of them who don't do that. therefore, this generation is stuck with a memory of vietnam that it doesn't really have any justification to really feel that way except what people have told them. and as i say, when i watch a good person give a false statement about losing the war and we shouldn't have been there, yes, we should have been there. we should have won. we did win, but then we should have kept our word. one thing if i may, i just want to say this. when a president signs a document, that is considered the people of the united states, not a president, but the people of the united states give their word. it has been our tradition and a tradition of democracies that when a president or a prime minister, whomever it may be, signs an agreement, that's the people of that nation. i can give you one quick example. it was ronald reagan it was during the campaign for the presidency. he was totally opposed to the panama canal treaties of president carter and made a big case of them. by the time he got to be president, they had been signed, sealed and delivered, it was done by one vote. he never did anything about the panama canal treaties when he was president. i think he was right both times. he was right in being opposed to it when he could be, but once signed by president carter, once it was done and the senate backed it it, as an american he has to be for it so he did nothing to harm it. that was knowing that that document was signed by the people of the united states. president bruce herschensohn, w about the iraq war? is there going to be a lingering effect? >> yes, there will be. again, it will be a lingering effect that i can hear it now, we should never have gone in. that kind of thing. there were no wmds there. i have heard it all in countless, countless times. yes, we should have gone in. we should have gone in and won, and we were on the verge of it with the surge of petraeus. we were on the verge of winning. but we had already announced we were going to be -- we were going to end the war. you don't end a war. you either win it or you lose it. you don't end a war. churchill said you cannot win a war by evacuation. we have evacuated. so of course we are going to lose. look, there are black flags in fallujah and ramadi, outside government buildings. the black flags of al qaeda. so yes. i am convinced that unless something changes radically, maybe it will, there will be a new leader of afghanistan, but boy, that's just hope that everything will be okay. i don't think it will. i think that karzai has sort of romanced himself with the taliban because he knows there's a tradition in afghanistan, the leaders get assassinated. they get killed. they just do. and he's certainly a likely suspect for assassination. and i don't -- i don't doubt that he's the king of his own future. we're going to leave but the taliban's going to stay. >> ukraine. >> ukraine? we are letting it happen. putin is probably the strongest leader in the world right now, something i despise saying, but he is. i've got to face it. and what he wants to do, he will do. we talk about sanctions as though he will go nuts. what we don't seem to realize is that a tyrannical person who runs a government doesn't really care that much about his own people. look at any tyranny in contemporary history, i use contemporary as my lifetime, so hitler, stalin, pol pot, they didn't care about their own people. they killed their own people. that is the way tyrannies think. we will have sanctions as though putin is going to think oh, my god, my poor people. no. he doesn't think that. he wants the power. he wants to rebuild the soviet union. i got to say the words again, i believe. i don't know that with certainty. it seems to be that way. and the way that he talks. one thing, going back to president obama, do you realize and it didn't mean anything to the majority of people who voted, but we all saw a videotape when the mic was on and he didn't know it, and he was saying to president medvedev, they were talking about missile defense in the czech republic and throughout europe, missile defense, and he said tell vladimir that if -- that if is my last election, and after the election, i could be more flexible. and medvedev said i understand and i'm sure he told vladimir putin. my god, i would think he would want to give that message to our allies if he says he could be more flexible, not those people who are opposed to us and number one, he should give that message to the voter. he would have lost, of course, and no one seemed to -- the majority, i should say, the majority of people heard it and said god and voted for him anyway. wow. telling an adversary, if that's the word i can use to describe russia, an adversary, that he could be more flexible after the election. wow. >> bruce herschensohn, people are going to be listening to this and saying oh, he's just a 1980s warmonger defense guy. the world's changed. we don't want to go to war anymore. >> no, i know we don't want to go to war and so we won't, and the world will change, and the world will change for the worst. it will change because, and i know because i have seen this in foreign countries. they look at the united states or have looked at the united states in the same way that the old u.s. western movies used to be, you would see the cavalry was coming and everyone would say the cavalry's coming, we're going to win after all. that's what people in foreign countries thought of the united states. when they really had it by a totalitarian or foreign power, the united states going to come in here. look, i'm one of them. in vietnam, i thought we -- i never thought for a second we could lose. never did. and the people there didn't, either. but by god, what happened, it was the 94th congress, incidentally, that did what -- they were the ones who destroyed everything that we did. our military never lost one battle in vietnam. peter, i'm just talking right now wherever my mind happens to go from your questions but yes, people are going to look at vietnam, they are also going to look at iraq. what president bush did in iraq, i think that any american would have done if they were president of the united states and had the information he had. people say well, the cia told him all wrong. perhaps, but so did the mi-6 of great britain which blair gave him the information. so did the german security, very, very long name that i just can't pronounce with about 18 syllables. so did the french. so did amazingly enough, so did putin. he was in office, remember, he was in office as president, then prime minister, then president. he had it and the u.n. had 17 resolutions against iraq that they disobeyed. who wouldn't do that coming right from 9/11, where every one of the united states seemed to think you know, there are times when you better take, you better do those things that are necessary to do before a tragedy rather than after a tragedy. and that feeling, i have had people say to me well, maybe what we need is another 9/11. no. it will just be another month of people understanding and then we will all go back to the things that we did before. that's -- yeah. >> bruce herschensohn, what's the solution in your view? >> getting someone strong enough. a solution is a strong leader. a strong leader who understands the tradition of presidents post world war ii. by tradition, i mean all of them. republicans, democrats, two exceptions. maybe i could say two exceptions in carter and obama, because president carter did abandon good friends of ours, romero, the president of el salvador, and somosa, the president of nicaragua. we got the sandanistas in return, a war that killed 70,000 in central america, he abandoned the shah of iran and in his place, the ayatollah khomeini and he abandoned taiwan to the peoples republic of china. he was the first to do this but not to the extreme numbers and consistency of president obama. >> somebody who has lived out in southern california for most of his life, what's the effect of hollywood on public policy? is there an effect? >> i'm not so sure it's on public policy. certainly it's an effect on policy with a lot of people in the country, there's an effect. the main thing that they're able to do is get a lot of money for a candidate because their names are stars and so people want to see them. in terms of really changing policy, perhaps with individual people within an administration but very few. by and large, it's what the president wants done and that's as it should be, what the president wants done. but as it should be, the people should really understand what they're voting for. if they want to change domestic policy, boy, work for a congressman or someone who wants to be a senator. if you want to change foreign policy, remember what you're doing when you vote for a president. that's what you're doing. he doesn't need to make speeches as we've heard obama make, president obama make any number of times, pleading with the congress to please give him the health care, give him whatever it may be. but he doesn't need to do that for foreign policy. he just does it if he wants to, and he doesn't want to. >> is there a cadre of hidden conservatives in hollywood still? >> oh, yes. they're not as hidden as they were once. no, they're not. a lot of them have come out. it is generally what is the way it works, if you are a star who brings in a lot of money for a picture, i mean, you're really making a top grossing picture, then you don't care what you are. if, however, you're a guy or a gal who's working their way up in the system, they care very much what you are. and they don't need you. people would always say to charlton heston, my god, you're so blessed conservative, yet you get all these terrific girls. well, of course he does. he brings, you know, i used to say millions. now we change it to a "b," billions. but he was a great actor, a great man and a successful man and people wanted to be as successful as him and they wanted to have the kind of grosses of their films that he could bring in. but someone starting out can't and they are smart to just sort of not make a big deal out of it. wait until they can get up to a position where they can really make changes. >> the last time california voted for a republican president was 1988, i believe, george h.w. bush. >> yeah. i think you're right. yeah. you are right. yes. >> is it a blue state? >> that is correct. that is correct. wow. i didn't think of it in those terms. generally, california really goes to the liberal end on most of the national offices. members of the house, members of the senate, president, vice president. it just does. and even in the state legislature, it's a very -- it's a very liberal state politically. >> is that trend continuing? >> i think so. i think -- it certainly has been until you can see it stop, it would be dangerous to think no, it isn't continuing. it certainly has been. >> in your view, what's the conservative argument to make that end? >> against that? >> the conservative argument, what would be the conservative argument to put an end to california's democratic domination? >> like a movie, it takes the right cast of characters. it just takes the right people. that's all. you can say all you want to, one thing that's dangerous that i think is happening with the republican party right now, really dangerous, is this what i would call string of isolationism that's coming back. they will call it libertarianism. well, i like libertarians when they talk about economics, but by god, there is a lot of isolationism using the same excuses that were used by republicans before world war ii for their isolation. oh, no, we're for free trade and certainly, if anything -- anyone bombards us, but we have no business being in whatever country may be mentioned at the time. oh, god. wow. no. we are the only nation in my lifetime, maybe in anybody's lifetime, that has consistently risked our lives for the liberty of strangers and i like that about us. i like it a lot. because no other people will do it. you asked a question awhile ago and i think i got on a different track or a wrong track, and there is a waiting line right now to take our place as leader of the world. a waiting line. and it is russia and the people's republic of china and jihadists and the u.n. even the eu. there's a line of people who are waiting and they are going to take it. one of them's going to take it. right now i would say putin has an inside track right now. at this moment. and maybe the jihadists, i don't know. but we are at war and we better realize that. we are at war against the jihadists and they declared war on us on 9/11 and killed our people. until we win, we have the risk of losing. >> finally, bruce herschensohn, we haven't really talked about the mideast but the president recently diverted into saudi arabia on his trip to europe. >> he did. >> i want to talk about the middle east situation as far as israel and saudi arabia and some of those other countries to tie it into obama's globe. >> yes. i would like to do that. saudi arabia could have been our covert and overt friend in a coalition that would include the united states and israel and any number of sunni gulf states

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